It always amazes me how such an educated group of individuals as exists on /. always makes such irrational statements evertime an article like this comes around. Full Disclosure: I've been in digital media for several years and am currently a fairly high-level individual on the more technical analytics/strategy side of things at a top digital media agency.
Irrational? Let's peer into the self-proclaimed mind of a high level advertiser, and see who's irrational. We'll ignore the pandering comment about how 2 million or so Slashdot members are "educated," since demonstrating otherwise would be a chore for no one.
Now, despite my background, I want to preface this by saying that since I was very young, I've always been very paranoid about my privacy, and still remain paranoid to this day.
By "paranoid" let's presume you mean careful and cautious, which is not the psychological definition but is more or less the way the term is used around here.
I used to react to these sorts of things by spewing vitriol without knowing enough technical details to truly be qualified to comment. I would venture that is the case for the vast majority of people here.
Here you venture into categorizing individuals and belittling the layperson. The world is filled with specialties, and there are forums where topics come up that are discussed by amateurs and experts alike. This is one of those places. Richard Feynman used to read all the letters amateur physicists would send him, just in case someone noticed something he didn't. You might suggest Feynman was the only one "truly qualified" to comment, but he thought otherwise.
You know how to code, but I doubt you know how these systems actually work, what they actually collect, or how that data is actually used in the real world (not whatever scare story you are reading this week). If you knew these things, you wouldn't be so disgusted by online advertising tracking practices.
Since advertising agencies, as a policy, do not make public all the data they collect from all sources, who all that data is sold to, and what all is done with that data, then a typical person is forced to make conjectures. Assessments based on knowledge of data that could be collected, how databases can be used, a few facts in various articles (e.g. ChoicePoint now LexisNexis), books (e.g. Edward Bernays), what friends and colleagues say, personal experience, and extrapolation.
Do I dislike intrusive advertising? Yes.
Cool, nearly everyone probably agrees with this.
Do I think there is a lot of shitty advertising out there? The vast majority of it is. But just as there are bad coders who give the rest a negative reputation, the same is true for online advertising.
Wait, you said earlier that if we knew more we wouldn't be disgusted, but now as an insider you're saying that the "vast majority" is "shitty advertising." This is contradictory, unless you think shitty advertising isn't disgusting. Then you go on to say the majority of "shitty" advertisers give the rest a "negative reputation." Yes, this is in fact how the whole "majority" notion works. Much like the joke where 99.9% of politicians give the others a bad name, get it? The technical term for these self-contradictions is cognitive dissonance; and if people say you're full of shit, this is part of the reason why.
Bottom line, the rest of your post is filled with similar drivel, which deserves to be further critiqued but perhaps this is already enough to evaluate properly.